I remember reading this short story ~10 years ago. It was an old (40-70s maybe?) short story.
The plot was roughly this: Some time in the future, mankind is kind of paranoid about aliens. There are these patrol ships sent out, ships with a single person in them. They're instructed to destroy any aliens they meet, if possible, or if not, to set their ships to jump on a random, not directly away from earth, direction - and basically commit themselves to death, never to reveal Earth's location.
Story is about a man who runs into a very tiny alien space ship, that were something like the last survivors of a race. He could easily destroy them, but after talking with them, he decides to instead take a random jump with the tiny alien space-ship on board, basically sacrificing himself to let the aliens have a chance to live on a distant planet.
Story ends with the image that on a distant planet, far away from Earth, never seen by humans, sits a statue of a man, surrounded by tiny creatures.
I know the plot is pretty much this, but I really want to find the author.